Mass production for Amazon’s Kindle smartphone could start in Q4 2012 or Q1 2013

The Amazon smartphone of which we told you last week is likely to enter mass production in the fourth quarter of this year, or in the first quarter of 2013. That’s what The Wall Street Journal says, quoting “officials at some of Amazon’s parts suppliers.”

Reportedly, the screen of the Amazon handset that’s currently in testing measures between 4 and 5 inches. So at least from this point of view the device will compete with Samsung’s Galaxy S III, and Apple’s upcoming iPhone 5 (rumored to have a display of at least 4 inches).

For now, we don’t know if Amazon plans to position its smartphone as an affordable one – like it did with the Kindle Fire tablet (pictured above) – or not. Anyway, since the Kindle Fire runs a modified version of Android, we should expect Android to be at the core of the company’s first smartphone, too. More details as we get them.